Franklin coach powerlifts her way into record books

Saturday

Mar 22, 2014 at 12:01 AM

By Matt TotaDaily News Staff

FRANKLIN — Two year ago, shortly after she was introduced as Franklin High’s new strength coach, Liane Blyn became a legend in the school's weight room.It was a YouTube video, later posted on the school newspaper’s website, showing Blyn dragging a yellow Hummer that had the students abuzz.Blyn, who had been training for a World’s Strongest Woman competition at the time the video was shot, said that wasn’t even the heaviest thing she had to haul. "The plane was heavier," she said in phone interview Friday.The 41-year-old Southwick native wowed students again this month when she set a women’s powerlifting world record for the bench press. At an invitational competition in Columbus, Ohio, Blyn benched 402 pounds, a new record for her weight class.Nationals is next; she’ll be traveling to Baton Rouge, La., in May with hopes of moving on to the world championships later this year in Denver, Colo. Powerlifting involves three tests of strength: the bench press, squat and two-handed dead lift.Blyn adopted powerlifting as a serious hobby in her 20s, and it has taken her as far as Zambia for the 2003 World’s Strongest Woman championship and Norway, where she represented the United States in the 2006 USA powerlifting world championships.She’s been a fixture in the gym since high school — playing softball and field hockey — and trained for Olympic weightlifting while studying for her master’s degree in sports medicine. However, she broke off from the sport because it would have been too time-consuming to pursue."It takes a lot more coaching and time to Olympic lift," Blyn said. "I was in grad school and didn’t have a lot of time. Olympic lifting, to be really good at it, you have to have a really good coach. I was decent. Powerlifting came a little bit easier for me."Blyn has competed in powerlifting events across the country. And she has been to the World Games twice — in 2009 and 2013. The international event features sports not seen in Olympic competition.USA Powerlifting, Blyn said, has lobbied for years to get the sport into the Olympics."But it’s a process," she said. "They’re getting closer to getting Olympic recognition. If you look at weightlifting, it’s not a prime sport. Most of the attention is going to swimming and gymnastics, and the Olympics are not focusing on the strength sports."It’s frustrating for a lot of people," she added, saying the games have become more about "dancing and ribbon twirling" than the feats of strength on which they were founded.If powerlifting is Blyn’s hobby, coaching is her passion. She’s trained collegiate athletes at Boston College, Arizona State University, University of Nevada-Reno and Northern Arizona University.The men in those programs respected her advice, she said, because she "walked the walk and talked the talk." It didn’t matter that she was a woman working in the male-dominated world of the weight room.Blyn said the most meaningful endorsement she ever got came from Dirk Koetter, the head football coach at Arizona State while she coached there."I don’t care if you’re black, blue, white, male or female, as long as you can make my athletes better and stronger," she recalled Koetter, who is now the offensive coordinator for the Atlanta Falcons, saying.In 2008, Blyn and her husband Richard opened Athletic Based Training in Holliston. Although she enjoyed running her own business, she began to "miss that environment of being in an athletic program."So when there was a coaching vacancy at Franklin High in 2012, she took the job without hesitation.The school’s athletic director, Brad Sidwell, entrusted Blyn to develop a new training regimen for its athletes. "He embraced my expertise with open arms," she said.More recently, Blyn was asked to design the weight room for the new Franklin High School, expected to be ready for the 2014-15 school year."I love coaching — seeing how young students’ athletic careers evolve," she said. "It’s a pretty cool thing."Should powerlifting ever become an Olympic sport, Blyn said she’d be proud to represent her country.Still, she said, "I’m not getting any younger. I still compete against the 20-year-olds and 30-year-olds. I get stronger every year."Matt Tota can be reached at 508-634-7521 or mtota@wickedlocal.com.